Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday March 18, 2011 @01:27AM
from the it's-a-droid-eat-droid-world dept.

The Guardian reports on problems faced by game makers on Android Market. Some independent developers are finding that their games are too easily copied and sold by competitors, and they say Google isn't reacting quickly enough to reports of infringement. Quoting:
"One of my customers emailed me three weeks ago, and informed me that another company was selling a version of my app – pirated and uploaded as their own. Of course I contacted Google right away. It took Google two days to take the app down. This publisher was also selling other versions of pirated games. I contacted the original developers of those games but they were still being sold a week later. You'd think [Google] might have a hotline for things like that! I would also note that the publisher selling the pirated games is still trading on the Android Market. They didn't even get their account suspended. ... Why are these accounts still allowed to be trading? It's negligent as far as I'm concerned."

Does this even need a telephone hotline?
If a red flag arose when any submitted app was 90% similar to an existing app from another developer, wouldn't the minimal human intervention required from Google eliminate this problem?

I think you missed the point - prospective apps could be run in an Android emulator that takes several screenshots every few seconds which are then used to make an image fingerprint of the app. It would be fairly trivial for somebody with Google's computing and database power to search an image fingerprint catalog for close matches that could then be ruled upon by a human.

What does that have to do with anything? If Google conducts an investigation on the issue and decides to take action, then doesn't it naturally follow that they would ban the developer for his gross misconduct? There doesn't need to be a hotline that would allow anyone to report anyone else and have them instantly barred (nor did the summary suggest such a thing), but if Google goes through an investigative process (which they did here) and determines that the claims have merit (which seems to be the case), then it's their responsibility to handle it appropriately. They didn't.

What does that have to do with anything? If Google conducts an investigation...

Your reply to the parent is misguided. He is addressing the single complaint of the takedown taking 2 days. You're talking about the complaint of failure to ban from the market place.

You are both right, and both quite relevant. Yes google should have banned the user in their response. And no 2 days is perfectly reasonable if the 2 days is the result of a thorough investigation and not just idle pointless delays on google's part. If you speed up the process by rubberstamping the takedowns you'll end up getting innocents caught in the receiving end of a malicious complaint.

I don't think the OP was necessarily complaining about that. It was just a statement of fact. Two days seems reasonable anyway to investigate the matter. The real complaint seems to be that Google found that a company sold a pirated app and is still allowed to do business on the Android marketplace, selling what appear to be other pirated apps. Selling just one pirated app should be grounds for termination.

Apple trades of freedom for users for freedom for software authors. Windows Mobile gave more freedom to users but less to authors. Windows Mobile 7, interestingly moves things more in the direction of Apple. Since I'm a dumb consumer and don't write any software but like to fiddle around I much preferred Windows Mobile with its rampant piracy, modding and hacking scene.

Of course in the long run platforms which offer more freedom to software author

i'm not sure how it's with android, but i know several symbian apps, that were available from developer website (usually beta) and later they moved to the ovi store.this way, you could have false app in the market first.

otoh: if there is confusion, who is the publisher, it's easy for google to sell the app, keep the money and transfer them later to the right one.

Yes, but if you follow the thread, one a single possible point of distribution makes the question of who created the app easier to answer.

In this story, both apps appeared on Google's market. But the first one to appear there wasn't necessarily the creator. It's possible it had previously been published in another store, or on a website, and copied from there.

It's not one of the bigger plus points for a single app store. But it certainly merits an entry on the list of plus points.

At the end of the day, it's all about whether they're selling more ads or increasing the value of them. Android is just another means to that end, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that Google has trouble policing their market place. It's simply not something they're used to doing. Same goes for Apple and Microsoft.

Google, like Apple, have to review the alleged infringement thoroughly before they can decide to take any action. If they don't, they run the risk of removing a legitimate app that was reported by a competitor, or a troll, or for any number of reasons. This is bad for business, and bad for PR. Unfortunately these investigations take their time, and even though you can throw more people into the pool of investigators, the final resolution is never going to be quick enough for app developers who want the infringing app remove IMMEDIATELY as it potentially costs them sales.

You're right about the speed issue, but what about the bigger issue of Google failing to ban the developer when they should have? If someone takes my work, copies it, claims that it's their own, and sells it for profit on your store, and you're made aware of the crime, you had better make sure that guy never steps foot in your store again. Simply telling him that he can't sell the knockoff of my product any more is not sufficient.

Agreed. The offending developer needs to have their account terminated. If they are not doing they, seems pretty clearly they are actively encouraging fraud. Likewise, all pending proceeds need to be forwarded to the original developer. Otherwise, it seems Google is knowingly profiting from a crime. After all, they still made their 30% commission. And what about the users who purchased the application? Do they receive refunds; thusly alleviating Google of their legal liabilities? Do they refer these customers to the original developer's application?

In particular, our infringer with a sick mother could absolutely find an ambulance chaser to sue google for his own lost legit revenue

Hardly. If he's doing anything illegal with his account, Google are well within their rights to terminate it. It's their private service, they are probably legally allowed to terminate people for any reason, even outside of abuses of the system.

I don't get your "my mother was sick, so I'm entitled to break the law" bullshit. Real courts might "take it into account", but the guy is still responsible for his own actions. By doing something illegal, he's just increasing the chances his sick mother won't have anyone around to help her when he goes to jail.

As for "cheating to test the waters" - wtf? I don't understand your reasoning behind any of this. Who the hell even thinks like that? Would you illegally upload someone else's work and charge people for it? If I was wanting to test the waters, I'd write my own app, or read blogs and ask questions to other developers. I certainly wouldn't start off by doing something illegal. If someone is willing to do that, why would they bother to even write their own software later on?

You seriously think google should damage their Android ecosystem by deleting non-infringing apps because the developer posted an infringing app?

YES. The developer broke the developer's agreement he agreed to when he started posting to the Android store. And if you had read even the summary, you'd know that the pirate in this case was only selling pirated copies of other apps. How many pirated copies does he have to be selling before he gets banned? 2? 4? A dozen?

Also, courts get kinda touchy about anyone cutting in on their territory. In particular, our infringer with a sick mother could absolutely find an ambulance chaser to sue google for his own lost legit revenue plus lawyer fees plus whatever.

And Google's army of lawyers would legally smack that guy back into the Stone Age. Here's a hint: Just because you have a sick mother is not an excuse for breaking the law.

As I said, the original developers asking for bans are just fucking morons who understand nothing about the wider world outside.

Imagine a developer with legit games too who just posted that infringing game because his mother needs an operation.

Perhaps he could mug someone instead, or rob a bank. He'd get the money faster, and I'm sure we'd all turn a blind eye because of his poor old mother right? No.

It would be trivially easy for Google to structure their store contracts in such a way that account revocation and loss of earnings were explicitly accepted in the case of infringement. You say it won't deter 'pro' criminals, yet if

Imagine a developer with legit games too who just posted that infringing game because his mother needs an operation.

That's not an excuse. Like others have said, if you rob a bank to pay for your mother's operation, you still go to jail.

Imagine two co-developers have falling out, one registers their new game first, reports the second's game as infringing, and gets the second account banned. Imagine a developer reposts another's game because he owns part but got cheated by the official developer. etc.

Not the right way to get the other developer to respect your IP rights. Complain to Google and get the game taken down, don't just submit it again.

As for the "mother's operation" scenario: I doubt Google cares whether someone was trying to pay for their mother's operation or their own drug habit. Nor should they! If I were Google, I would not want infringing content on my store, no matter what the reason. I would feel no qualms about banning someone who tried selling Angry Birds because they needed to pay their mom's medical bills..

Your whole argument makes no sense. How would punishing infringement ever encourage people to infringe more? How would it "punish the partially or potentially developers much more than the wholesale infringers?" You make a lot of blanket statements, but say absolutely nothing to back them up.

Google's best move is to get rid of as much infringing content as possible. You could make the case that if an aspect of a game (or even the main subject of the game) is infringing, then Google should be judicious in assessing the situation. For games that are straight-up copies, however — as in, if the game is a straight-up pirated version that's been uploaded as the infringer's original work — then an auto-ban is not at all out of the question.

And FYI, the reason this is different from Google Video, YouTube, Google Docs, etc, is that here people are making money from infringement. It's a whole different ballgame.

Our courts would take the "mothers operation" scenario into account, even if you're robbing a bank.

And they would still find you guilty, because you robbed a fucking bank.

An arbitrary punishment of auto-banning all infringers would just destroy Google's credibility with the Russian, Chinese, Indian, etc. developers who'll engage in casual infringement

I fail to see how this is a bad thing. And cut the "casual infringement" bullshit: These people have the goal of stealing revenue from legit developers. And any legit developer isn't going to do anything related to "casual infringement"

No, it seems perfectly legit. You are stealing from that original developer.

Imagine a developer with legit games too who just posted that infringing game because his mother needs an operation.

That is a retarded scenario. If that's truly the case, then the guy should develop his own damn application.

Imagine two co-developers have falling out, one registers their new game first, reports the second's game as infringing, and gets the second account banned. Imagine a developer reposts another's game because he owns part but got cheated by the official developer. etc.

In each of these cases, that is not the proper way to handle it. The proper way is in the court system, for breach of contract.

Second, you don't want to scare away infringing users who might become legitimate non-infringing users and improve the Android market place. A ban for infringement obviously isn't going to dissuade a professional infringer, but it'll very likely drive away a legitimate developer who's just cheating to test the waters.

Another retarded justification. Someone who is posting pirated apps for sale is not "testing the waters", they are stealing, plain and simple, and should be dissuaded from being part of the marketplace

From not owning an iPhone and/. stories all these years I was under the impression that Apple yields to no one, big or small, pre or post crime. We shouldn't clump Apple and Google's App gardens under the same roof. Google is the more oblivious nanny of the app world.

See also: porn, voip over AT&T and "rejection based on perceived dangers to stock iOS" functionality --even others never disclosed to devs are enough to warrant warning-less removal and outright rejection. I'm not sure about accounts suspe

Well duh, for one Apple doesn't let you install an app unless it's from their official App Store. Google lets you install anything you want. There is a user setting to ensure that you are only installing "official" apps, but it doesn't sound like it does that much use overall, what with all these malware and fraud stories. I'd still consider developing for Android, but I am disappointed at the way things are being portrayed as heading, and hope Google turns it around.

Google lets you install anything you want. There is a user setting to ensure that you are only installing "official" apps

Are you referring to the Settings > Applications > Unknown sources checkbox or to Android Debug Bridge? If the former, then AT&T leaves that checkbox at the "official apps only" setting and hides it from the user. If the latter, then Google requires device makers to leave the ADB backdoor open, but AT&T makes one register as a company in order to download the drivers to use ADB.

I was referring to the official apps only setting, which is on the cheap Chinese tablet I initially bought to mess around with Android, and my phone (which has a custom ROM on it anyway, but it did have the setting beforehand). It's insane the things that telcos can get away with, especially in the US..

That's criminal copyright infringement. [cornell.edu] If it's for commercial gain, and the total retail value exceeds $1000, and distributed over a computer network, the criminal provisions apply.
At $2500, it becomes a felony.

Something that comes up over and over in patent discussion is how ridiculous it is that sticking 'internet' or 'cloud' or 'electronic' or any other buzzword in front of something seems to qualify it as a new invention. We all sigh that computers don't automatically make old ideas new or require special treatment just because a processor or network is involved.

Same goes for fraud or any other criminal activity. Just because computers are involved doesn't mean that o

This is not just copyright infringement. This is plagiarism and misappropriation. Criminals are claiming other's work as their own. And they are capitalizing on this fraudulent claim to take money that should go to the real authors. This is quite different from random persons copying songs. This is actual theft.

Be careful with the terminology. Big Media likes the conflation of plagiarism and counterfeiting with mere copying. They want to be able to hit someone who snagged a copy of some tune off a P2P service with the same punishment as these software thieves deserve.

This is not just copyright infringement. This is plagiarism and misappropriation.

No this is copyright infringement.

In this context, plagiarism means copyright infringement combined with failure to attribute; hence the "just" in "not just copyright infringement".

What you label a "software thief" isn't any different from warez pirates or those illegally copying movies.

The difference between warez and plagiarism is that release groups in the warez scene don't strip off the logo of the original publisher, such as Last Century Fox's searchlight scene or Disney's castle or Paramount's mountain or WB's shield or Universal's globe or Columbia's torch lady.

Other than the fact they are outright profiting from their infringement. I have been known to pirate software, but I am *very* particular about who can "borrow" my CDs of anything except SNES games because I do know that profiting (or distributing, most of the time) from infringement puts you in a whole new league.

This is not just copyright infringement. This is plagiarism and misappropriation.

Don't be stupid. That's what copyright infringement is.

This is actual theft.

By all means, please show where the theft occurred. Prepare to be laughed at a lot.

Be careful with the terminology. Big Media likes the conflation of plagiarism and counterfeiting with mere copying.

Plagiarism at this level is a form of copyright infringement, which is why it's illegal and not merely grounds for expulsion from school. You have utterly failed to properly use the terminology. Theft requires that you take someone from someone and they no longer have it. This is something else; it is copyright infringement for personal gain, which is why it is a criminal

In your mp3 torrent example there's not actually any money changing hands and the people involved are probably already aware that they're not obtaining it through proper channels.

What's being done here is closer to counterfeiting a CD or DVD and selling the counterfeits to unsuspecting shoppers because they are unaware that the property they are buying is essentially stolen. To continue the analogy, the CD they're buying may also have a Sony/BMG-style rootkit on it.

Not according to Slashdot users. Every single time copyright infringement or copying music/movies/etc. comes up on this site, the users here overwhelmingly argue that unless there is some physical thing taken, it's OK becuase it's not theft.

Bullshit. Nobody says that.(can you provide a link to posts that do?) People correctly say that copying files is not theft. That doesn't make it "OK", it just means that if a crime has been committed, it's something else, like copyright infringement. There is a reason there is a legal term "intellectual property": because it's different to physical property and has different laws and different offences against those laws.

What's being done here is not really all that differrent from bittorrenting an MP3

It's completely different because it's being SOLD, and in the same market as the ori

Not according to Slashdot users. Every single time copyright infringement or copying music/movies/etc. comes up on this site, the users here overwhelmingly argue that unless there is some physical thing taken, it's OK becuase it's not theft.

Bullshit. Nobody says that.(can you provide a link to posts that do?) People correctly say that copying files is not theft. That doesn't make it "OK", it just means that if a crime has been committed, it's something else, like copyright infringement. There is a reason there is a legal term "intellectual property": because it's different to physical property and has different laws and different offences against those laws.

Scarceness is the applicable distinction. Obviously, physical goods are scarce. Information is not scarce. But, attribution IS scarce. Someone offering a copy of a Beatles song is one thing, someone who is not the Beatles claiming to be the author of that song is quite another.

Suppose we set up new systems to compensate authors for their works, in which copying, freely copying, is good. The more your work is copied, the more you receive from various funds. Such systems would break down if others cou

This and only this should be what claims of copyright infringement is.

As others have said, this story is about "plagiarism and misappropriation", ie stealing real sales by selling someone else's software as your own. Copyright infringement doesn't only apply in situations where you feel it's to your own advantage.

Normal people downloading crap instead of buying them should just be labelled smart people.

Actually, they're very obviously copyright infringers who are making copies of things without the legal right. It might be "smart" to avoid costs where you can, though if you're breaking the law to do so, it's risky, and seen by many (including myself) as immoral. The record companies are pretty immoral too of course. It's not a black and white decision, but there's nothing particularly noble about infringing copyright.

For what it's worth, I think of you as just the same type of scum as these guys who are sell other people's software for their own gain. You're saving money by not buying music. You're not getting the same level of financial benefit as these professional pirates, but you still are on the same scale, just at a lower level. I'm not saying you'd buy all of the music/movies/software you download, but presumably if you like any of it enough to keep it, you'd have bought some of that if piracy wasn't an option.

>The culprit was traced to a Chinese origin. I highly doubt any US authorities will bother to run over there, hog-tie the guy and drag him back over to the US.

In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe

If I am doing something wrong, please let me know, but browsing the market is absolutely painful. My biggest problem is the fact that you can go to a top category like "Business" and you are limited to THREE filters, "Top Paid", "Top Free" and "Just In". They are all irrelevant for me, because cost is not really an issue for under $20 apps, and "Just In" can list anything from first release betas to minor updates. Searching for a specific term is even worse because then you can't apply any further filters. As a related issue, when browsing categories or searching specifics, apps seem to be listed at random.

I would like to be able to sort apps by rating, developer, price, date uploaded, number downloads, and a whole bunch of other criteria. You know, stuff that I take for granted while searching through Google. You would think that the leading search company would be capable of implementing more than a rudimentary market application...

There are three explanations.

First, I could be incompetent. This is very likely, since I got my first Android phone less than a week ago. However while I'm not a developer, I am not exactly computer illiterate. I was able to unlock and root my HTC Desire, and I already tried 4 different ROMS (currently running Cyanogenmod 7 nightly 22) and a few dozen apps. My last phone was a Nokia N900, and its repository system automatically contained only free, and mostly GPL apps searchable on a variety of criteria. The Market was a very negative culture shock for me. If however I am incompetent, I welcome any suggestions how to better search for apps THROUGH THE MARKETPLACE (I'll come back to this in a second).

Second, Google engineers are inept and can't implement better searching in their own market app. I seriously doubt it, given the extensive features of any other Google app. FFS, think of the analysis Google Goggles, Voice Search or even Maps have to perform, while Market can't even sort apps properly? If the phones themselves are too slow, offload the computing to the Google servers just like Goggles and Voice Search.

Third, it's in Google's interest to force users to browse hunderds of apps, try out a lot of garbage before finding what they are looking for. This also ties in with TFA. Maybe Google wants the bragging rights to say they have hundreds of thousands of apps. Maybe they don't care, but the OP is not the first developer to complain about copied apps. One ADW theme designer stopped releasing the template for his themes because people were copying them and reselling them throu the Market. This is a very serious issue for Google, because Balmer was right. DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS! If they start bailing out, your platform dies out, which incidentally is what happened to my Nokia N900.

The ONLY reliable way to find Android apps is to either search through Google's site that we all use, or go to specific Android development forums like XDA and search past threads.

There are numerous alternative markets. If you want official then there's market.android.com, and it syncs over the air to your handset. With Android you are not restricted to any default apps, even the homescreen/launcher can be changed so can the market. Alternative markets have some nice innovative thinking on how to do an app store. To paraphrase the Apple spin: If you hit a wall in usability of Android then there's an app for for that

Honest question: are any of those reliable and trustworthy? Set up by respectable businesses? This question as I'd love to see some real competition for Google's market place.

Thinking of the regular stories of malware being distributed through those third-party markets...

Not that the quality of Googles Android market is that great, at least they have SOME measures in place including the small fee that a developer has to pay (in effect identifying themselves) and the signing requirements (linking an app un

I've just realised I'd misunderstood the initial question. I thought (based on the discussions) the query was how to install an application that lets you access the Android Market more easily than the default app.

Yes, but then does the AT&T block extend to anything that's not the Google market? As in, I install SlideME or some Steam-like game store from the Google Market. Does AT&T allow me to install from those markets then, or does their "Unknown Sources" extend to those markets I just downloaded?

To you. There's enough evidence to point that an app costing more than just a few dollars will cause users to think before installing. Also by searching free apps you'll often find ad supported or even trial versions of paid apps. The "top free" category is definitely interesting.

The market place works on ratings and downloads. It's a word of mouth game providing you quick downloads. It's not really a place to go and do your research or actively start looking for any app to serve a purpose. My advice to

No, it's not just you. The Android market UI experience really is that bad.

Usually, Google are the ones to look at a competitor's product and say, "hey, how can we do this better?" For whatever reason Android's killer feature, the Android Market, was basically copied from Apple's App store. Rather than give users better tools to find useful apps, they just did what the App Store did.

No, it's not you. I've owned Android phone for a year, and now own a Honeycomb tablet. Market is horrible on both (in fact, it's worse on the tablet, even though I didn't suspect it would even be possible).

As a business, setting up a public marketplace is about the marketplace, not about the policing. Policing is secondary -- way secondary. There's zero profit in policing the marketplace for Google. There's simply no money to be made. None, until it becomes so rampant that developers like you stop using the marketplace as a result.

Clearly, that hasn't happened.

You complained to Google about the pirates. What you were supposed to do was to pull your own app down, and leave for a safer place.

Just leaving? he'll leave the crook a "winner" who still "owns" his app clone and makes cash off it... and Google no longer has any obligation to pursue damages for an ex-customer (if such unlikely thing as capturing the thieves were to happen down the pipeline.) Worst case, this is the dev's bread and butter.

Vacating an App market's premises isn't as seamless as plunking your website's hard work under new ISP hosting:

As a business, setting up a public marketplace is about the marketplace, not about the policing. Policing is secondary -- way secondary. There's zero profit in policing the marketplace for Google. There's simply no money to be made. None, until it becomes so rampant that developers like you stop using the marketplace as a result.

There is lots of money to be made in policing the market. Apple polices the its own App Store and it is much more successful than Google's.

Developers want a market so that makes their app easily discovered and their copyright will be protected. If they don't get this, they will focus more resources on iPhone development.

Customers want high quality apps without worrying about filtering through spam and malware. If they don't like the experience, they will buy an iPhone.

Send a DMCA notice to Google and the other company and take the other company to court. If Google doesn't respond by removal as per DMCA rules, take them to court, too. These tools exist, so use them. They're not *just* around for the MPAA, RIAA, and BSAA to use.

There's so little noise from underdog use of the DMCA tools, when we expect the abuses to be astronomical in the USA.

I seriously doubt all of the abusers are in China and Russia, so there must be lots of USA-reacable Goliaths getting defeated. But virtually nobody is spreading success stories. It must be that lawyerless geeks can't wield the tools without lawyers, and lawyers are just too expensive without a big corp in our pockets.

It seems the Goliaths of the "legally persecutable" world found good loophol

I'm no star dev, but I have a few free applications on market. One of the things I noticed is for a while Google have had a message stating that copy protection is being deprecated, and replaced with "Licensing service". More information here: http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/licensing.html [android.com]. Not sure if this would affect OP's situation; whether he was/is using the old licensing services and/or if it will improve the situation in general.

LVL DRM was bypassed not long after it came out. From what I can tell the apps that seem to resist being pirated have to use multiple levels of DRM (including custom rolled solutions) which is also why so many apps request your IMEI.

It's is sad really. I dont think devs want to use this kinda stuff (I know I'd rather not) but the sting of piracy is hard to take when people buying $200-$500 phones wont spring $0.99 for an app.

For YEARS now they have allowed spammers free reign to crap all over Usenet using their Googlegroups interface. They do nothing to block or remove spam, when clearly they have the technology, as they use in filtering GMail, to do so.

I don't know if they have a policy of making Usenet into a shitpile to make their own hosted groups more attractive. Or if they just don't care at all.

I contacted the original developers of those games but they were still being sold a week later.

The question remains, did those developers contact Google in a timely manner? Google responded to his request in two days. I think two days is pretty reasonable. If Google was contacted, we do not know what Google has done. They could be doing something clever, but they are a big company so we aren't supposed to assume anything but incompetence or malice.

The problems of piracy, malware and promotion (discoverability) would exist with or without Google having a store. Baker said of Amazon, "hopefully t

But a weak article. "Devs" amount to mister Baker here. And for his trouble, he receives free advertising on/. and in the Guardian. So, we now know that one developer had this problem; it was handled by Google, though not entirely to his satisfaction; he got free publicity for complaining. What did we learn?

Take your lessons from the leader in the field. You don't need it pirated, you need to give it away - sort of. You also need to work the buyer a little.

The lite version of Angry Birds with 15 levels is a cute introduction to the game that rewards the downloader for the trial by providing a few hours of entertainment. Sound is used throughout to influence the player. The play control is simple, which hides some complexity that lets the player think he's smart for figuring out the puzzle. Progress is incremental - you have to defeat a level before you go on, which rewards the user with frustration - this is good to a point, but they have to be well onto the hook before you pull them forward with frustration so the first few levels have to be fairly easy - but not pathetically so. Lessons: Hook 'em with a freebie that starts easy and gets harder fast, but doesn't turn impossible. The global competitiveness thing with top scores is trite. It's overdone. Avoid it.

The game is a moral play and the player is cast as the good guy destroying the evil pigs that steal the eggs. Even my 2 year old grandson gets this. Every world starts with a cartoon video that tells a story, each level starts with an intro that builds suspense. Do pigs really steal eggs? No. But that's the premise built by the opening animation that we consent to when we play the game. Idling is nefarious pig grunting to encourage play, and play includes enthusiastic bird charging sounds. It starts easy, with one star for each level, but is very difficult at three stars each level. Each time you beat a level you get an audio reward (birds crowing and a little instrumental piece) - and a trumpet for a new high score for the level. And when you don't beat it, a punishment - pigs laughing and grunting. You can get in and out very quickly and without too much loss (you can try a level in 30 seconds or so). Quicker is better. For the cheaters there are YouTube walkthroughs. It has no ads. This is the beta they used to get people into the game and its main screen includes a link to the market where you can buy the full version now that there is one. Lessons: Tell a story. Work the user emotionally with audio, give a lot of entertainment in the beta and it'll go viral and get you lots of beta testers and the feedback you need to perfect your game. It wouldn't kill you to post the first few YouTube walkthroughs for the cheaters yourself under a nym. Cheaters think they're clever for resourcing YouTube, and they're only hurting themselves. Reward them even for just running the app, with a happy greeting. Cast the player as the good guy in a moral play.

It's a great intro to the ad-supported full version. In fact, it's such a good intro that they've now a non-beta "seasons" freebie game that has more levels that is ad supported, that gets updated every major holiday with even more levels. Lessons: free spinoffs amplify the viral nature of the freebie and can be a good little earner all by itself. Save this for after the game itself is profitable.

For the full version that's ad-supported there are far more levels of course, and more all the time. Naturally there would be, or your customers would stop viewing ads when they completed the game. The full, no-ad version isn't supported on my phone yet (Android) and I suspect that's because they're making so much money on the ads. Lessons: if the ad-based game goes viral you can hire some cheap level designers to generate more content as time goes on - and you should to keep the money rolling in. And that pays for improving the value of the for-pay game as well.

The for-pay game includes an additional cheat: the Mighty Eagle, that you have to buy in-game to use. I don't get this option on Android yet I don't think, not that I'm the cheating kind. In-game purchases are the sort of thing you probably shouldn't think about right off. But the for-pay game is ridiculously cheap: 99c on iOS. That makes it so cheap that people don't even think about buying it, and d